LiveYourPassions

Things are not as they appear

One of my all time favorite movies is, The Matrix. There is a scene with Neo (the young apprentice) and Morpheus (the wise elder) after Neo has accepted and taken the Red Pill (truth) that Neo awakens and asks “Why do my eyes hurt?”? Morpheus responds quickly: “You’ve never used them before.”

About 2000 years ago these two very discouraged men are going for a long walk from Jerusalem over to this little place called Emmaus They are yacking away and along comes this guy in the path who asks what they were chatting about. Surprised that their visitor seems to be so clueless they ask him if he just got into town and how could he have missed that Jesus had been crucified? I mean come on buddy, where have you been?!? They also share that the word on the street was that the tomb was empty and some women had visions of angels. The 3 travel together to Emmaus and after several miles of chatting it up, the two guys and their visitor finally make it to the village. They ask this fellow to join them for dinner, which he does. After breaking bread, he disappears as the two men realize they had, all along, been walking with Jesus. Yikes man, I mean how could these guys have missed that they were talking with Christ?

“Surely the lord is in this place and I was not aware of it”
Genesis 28:16

Has that ever happened to you? It was there before, you’re not sure how you missed it but you did. And it’s that message, that things are not what they seem, that permeates this story (Luke 24:13-35), most of scripture, and every day of our lives. It is the message that there is more going on then we are able or willing to see; that things are not as they seem. Like Neo in the Matrix and the two men on the Road to Emmaus, we somehow miss precisely what we are looking for all along even when it is staring us right in the face. So then how do we “wake up”, how do we “see”?

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:32

And often it is really hard to choose to see the truth. I’ve always thought a footnote to John 8:32 needed to be added that goes something like – “…. but first, the truth might hurt like hell”. And so rather than hurt on the way to the truth and the light at the end of the tunnel, we tell ourselves stories. They are splendid little stories about how we are “fine”, about how we are doing it for the kids, about how we can stop anytime, about how we are right and he/she/they are wrong, but our stories and our motives are often suspect and the longer that we tell ourselves these stories, and the longer that we are right about being wrong the tougher it becomes to see and hear truth.

“Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist,”
Ephesians 6:14

Sadly at some point we start to believe our own stories and we create this agreement “reality” as though if we say something enough times it will become the truth. It will not. And so, in this high tech, information overflow sort of world where we are all so much smarter, God still walks beside us but we do not see, He speaks but we do not hear, He offers light but we choose darkness.

“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”
John 14:6

Where’s the Map?

“Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.”
Psalm 143:8

I remember planning long trips back in the stone age, BI (before internet), and what a process it was. Paper maps, red pencils, phone calls ahead for hotels, etc, etc, wow! Now of course, we’ve got MapQuest and computerized navigation. But even with all this technology, if you don’t know where you’re going its likely you won’t get there. Few of us would just jump in the car and drive to somewhere we have never been without a map. And yet, each day, many of us will wake up, race off to work or into our day and by the end of the day we are left with a feeling of having never really arrived. Each of us are given the map of God’s word, but most of us choose to ignore, or are too busy to read, the map, as we wander aimlessly through life wondering why we are not fulfilled, why we can not find peace, why we can not find God. And in putting aside the map for our lives, we become like the fellow who is lost and too busy to stop and get gas because he was focused on trying to get “there”.

Our lives are cluttered with technology and people that will help us get “there” quicker but they do little to tell us where we should be going. We are so distracted by the noise around us that we forget to look at the map, we forget to gaze upon our map maker “ our saving God. And in the act of looking at God, we at long last do not look at ourselves and can finally see where we are and where we are going. Ever heard the saying - “you make a better door than a window”? It is tough to see far when we are standing in the darkness of our own shadow. When we start to look “out” instead of “in” life tends to fall in place and the purpose, the peace and the things we have for so very long worked harder, longer, smarter to find, tend to appear as we realize what we were looking for, we already had. When the eyes of our soul finally look out to meet the eyes of God looking in, there at that moment we find life.

Peace!

Faith & Worry

“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Matthew 6:33

So a couple thousand years ago a fellow by the name of Jesus started spouting out these radical thoughts that flipped right/wrong on its head. He said things like “Seek first the kingdom of God” and a real wacky one - “do not worry about your life”. Cool stuff but this is the “real” world. And 2000+ years later we are still stuck in the “real” world where somehow we are able to separate our spiritual lives (when we have time for that) from our “real” lives. And so we worry about being “successful” and we seek not the kingdom but the corner office or the new Lexus or the new life.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Heb 11:1

And because we want to be a success, we worry about making enough money, we worry about the sort of clothes we wear. Heck we’ll worry about pretty much anything and everything. It’s as if we were to stop worrying that ‘bad’ stuff might actually happen so I’d best keep on my toes as if our worry will contribute in a positive way to the quality of our lives and those around us.

Matthew 6:27,33-34
“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

And, worry is great at keeping us keenly focused on what “isn’t” rather than what is. And yet we never see what we are doing wrong and then we wonder why we have no time and no peace.

“The longer a man (or woman) is wrong, the surer he (or she) is that he (or she) is right.”